Movie directors choose the best movies of all time

Last week we told you about Sight and Sound‘s latest poll of the world’s top film critics and Citizen Kane‘s tumble – thanks to new board leader, Vertigo – down to number two after 50 years as “the greatest film ever made.”

The British mag also queried hundreds of directors to get their top ten choices, and their collective picks share five in common with the critics. But now Rope of Silicon has posted the individual lists of several of the filmmakers, from Martin Scorsese andWoody Allen to this year’s Oscar winner Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist) and Richard Ayoade (star of the Britcom The IT Crowd, director of the indie comedy Submarine and currently co-starring in The Watch).See the lists here.

Winner of the best foreign language film this past February for A Separation, Iranian director Asghar Farhadi shows some love for early Woody Allen – and one of my favorites from him – by placing Take the Money and Run at number seven.

Michael Mann (Heat) has an admirable list, with the possible exception of his fourth best – Avatar.

Steve McQueen (the British director of Shame, not the, well, long dead actor and candidate for coolest star ever) earns my respect for including Spike Lee‘s Do the Right Thing, surely on my top ten list as well.

I’ve always heard The Red Shoes was Martin Scorsese‘s favorite film, but he gives it a seventh-place standing. 8 1/2 gets his top nod.

And to illustrate just how influential Hollywood moviemaking can be to the rest of the world, here is the complete list from French-Lithuanian writer-director-producer Michel Hazanavicius. All but one, American films (And the one that isn’t is British … and stars two big-name American actors):